Examination of Witnesses (Questions 680
- 699)
WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2003
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON
MP, MR SIMON
WEBB CBE AND
AIR MARSHAL
SIR JOCK
STIRRUP KCB, AFC
680. I thought you might seize the opportunity
of challenging some of the legal advice that has been spread all
over the papers today, not least from the Matrix Chambers, but
obviously you do not want to pursue that.
(Mr Hoon) The legal position is quite clear. I set
it out to the House on Monday and nothing has changed since then.
681. So given the doctrine of pre-emption, do
you think that it makes any significant difference to the rules
of engagement which are given to command the Armed Forces on the
ground?
(Mr Hoon) We do not comment in detail on rules of
engagement. That would not be appropriate, but equally what is
right is that those rules of engagement will reflect the relevant
international law and will reflect the overall position of the
Government and that is not something that I suspect need cause
any surprise. It is certainly not changed by the New Chapter.
Mr Hancock
682. If we were then to go down the line of
accepting that pre-emption was not only our right, but a very
desirable position for us to adopt, even without the view that
pre-emptive action is a good way of protecting yourself, what
does that actually do for us in the use of our Armed Forces? Does
that mean that we will be embarking on a whole series of expeditions
and operations in different parts of the world?
(Mr Hoon) If you will forgive me, I think we just
need to define our terms a little more clearly. You are using
pre-emption as if it is something that I have consistently resisted,
as if this is some new doctrine or new principle. Pre-emption
is a form of self-defence and if you had said to me, "Are
you using self-defence as a justification for what we are doing?",
then we can have an interesting discussion.
683. You are attacking a threat, are you not?
We are talking about the War on Terrorism and the Committee have
been very helpfully supplied with the rules of war on the War
on Terrorism which makes very interesting reading because if you
base part of your policy on pre-emption, it means that no country
can be neutral in the future and no part of the world would be
sacrosanct, and, as far as you were concerned, if you felt there
was a terrorist threat there which you perceived could develop
into a real threat to the United Kingdom, you would, under what
you have described in the pre-emption part of your contribution,
attack them.
(Mr Hoon) Again if we talked about prevention rather
than pre-emption, it again would be consistent with the way in
which the United Kingdom approaches these issues because, as I
have consistently said to the Committee and indeed to the House,
our response to international terrorism depends on a range of
different mechanisms available to the Government and the use of
military force is only one of those and indeed may well come a
long way down the track having used diplomatic, political and
perhaps economic means in order to try and deal with the threat
that a particular terrorist organisation might pose. Ultimately,
the use of force in those circumstances would be on the basis
that we would be defending ourselves against a threat to the people
of the United Kingdom.
684. I am still curious to understand where
pre-emption leads us to. If we accept under the New Chapter we
are developing a new style of forces to compete with the terrorist
threat we are waging this war on, there are a number of ethical
questions about where pre-emption takes you and there is also
the way in which you use your Armed Forces. One of the pre-emptive
measures might be to increase our involvement in peace-keeping
to protect against escalating to a war.
(Mr Hoon) I have just said that.
685. That goes back to the question of how you
maintain in the New Chapter your level of Service personnel. You
talked about no problems recruiting, but the problem of overstretch
is one of keeping people in the forces, and Gerald's statistic
is a real one, which is that nearly 98 per cent of the Armed Forces
who commented in that survey said that they were concerned about
the way in which they were being stretched. Now, if you go down
the pre-emption road, it means that they will have to do more
and more of it.
(Mr Hoon) Well, not necessarily because the point
I have just made is that prevention of a terrorist threat would
depend on a range of mechanisms available to governments to be
able to deal with that threat before it actually manifested itself
in a terrorist attack against the people of the United Kingdom.
In those circumstances, it may well be that we would work internationally
to police, to obtain information, to deal with a terrorist organisation
long before we used Armed Forces to achieve that. Again the kinds
of techniques that the Armed Forces might use might vary. It would
be, in my experience and I hope this is the case, relatively unusual
to deploy large numbers of members of the Armed Forces to a place
like Afghanistan to engage in some aspects of what looks like
a conventional war against a particular country because that country
refused to give up Osama Bin Laden and those responsible for the
attacks on September 11th. It may well be using the Armed Forces
in a whole range of different ways, more flexible, more agile,
building on the conclusions that we reached in the Strategic Defence
Review, but not assuming that that necessarily always leads to
a large-scale engagement by British forces. In fact one of the
conclusions that I think the New Chapter perfectly well leads
to is the need for smaller, more discrete, more mobile, more agile
forces rather than the kind of commitment that you are talking
about. The arrest this weekend is a demonstration that prevention
involves many different arms of government working to achieve
those ends.
Mr Howarth
686. Secretary of State, does the rapid evolution
of international law in response to US policy and greater international
willingness to intervene in the domestic affairs of states in
the world raise broader legal questions for the articulation of
appropriate rules of engagement? I recognise that you do not want
to comment specifically on current rules of engagement, but this
greater willingness to intervene does clearly raise a number of
questions. Does it concern you?
(Mr Hoon) Well, I am not sure necessarily it involves
a greater willingness to intervene. I think what we learned on
September 11th, and we were aware, as I have said already, of
terrorist threats, but the difference, in my judgment, was that
the particular terrorist threat had a strategic impact over and
above the kind of lower level of terrorist organisations that
we had seen in the past. This was an organisation genuinely organised
internationally with bases around the world, with a country giving
it massive host nation support in a way we had not previously
contemplated and in those circumstances clearly we were forced
to intervene to deal with it. I do not say that necessarily means
that we will have to intervene any more or less than in the past,
but clearly one consequence, as was set out in the Strategic Defence
Review, of a much more uncertain world is the fact that it is
placing more demand on our Armed Forces.
687. You talked about going to the source of
the threat as being a key issue for the new doctrine.
(Mr Hoon) Well, I said that it was more likely to
lead to results and success than waiting for the threat to manifest
itself in the United Kingdom.
688. I do not disagree with that and I think
that would be a better way of approaching it, but quite clearly
the argument that Afghanistan provided ample evidence of being
a source for those who plotted towards the events of September
11th may be a less obvious example and certainly less easy for
the public to determine examples which, nevertheless, provided
a threat against the United Kingdom. One of the issues which concerns
me, and you may not want to develop it now, is this question of
what is going to happen to our forces in the event that there
is perceived to be on a wide international scale no internationally
justified legality for our actions and that you have instructed
our forces to take action, they have taken it and they are then
held to account by the international criminal court.
(Mr Hoon) Well, I make it absolutely clear that we
would not ask our forces to do that. I would not take a decision
which was not justifiable in international law. I have said over
and over again that the decision that we take would be governed
by international law and that remains the case and I repeat it.
689. You have just made the point that the business
of which you were originally a part thrives on a variety of views
and then we go back to the question of who will then interpret
it—the Security Council of the United Nations?
(Mr Hoon) As far as a sovereign nation is concerned,
it rests on the advice that is given to ministers and the execution
of that advice on their behalf and that remains the position.
690. I do think that this needs seriously addressing,
Secretary of State, because I remain concerned because the United
Kingdom is a signatory to the international criminal court arrangements,
which the United States is not, nor, thinking of current issues,
is the Government of Iraq and the French have an opt-out. These
are serious questions and it seems to me that we could be held
to account in the circumstances where Britain was acting in what
you perceived, what I perceived, we both agreed was our national
interest, but the rest of the world took a different view.
(Mr Hoon) But these are not new questions and they
are not new issues. We have had these issues for as long as there
have been international organisations that resolve international
issues between states. Your question strikes at the heart of the
international community's efforts to resolve matters other than
by the use of force, which has been central to the view of governments
of this country for as long as those international organisations
have existed. If you are challenging the basis of, say, the International
Court of Justice, of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg,
of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, a whole range
of international legal institutions whose job is to judge precisely
whether or not individuals acting on behalf of states have acted
lawfully, there is nothing new about the issue that you are taking
up.
Mr Howarth: Don't tempt me on too many of those
organisations.
Mr Hancock
691. Are you saying then that if there were
a second Resolution of the United Nations which was not carried,
but in fact was defeated and the outcome was that it was not right
for a war to be engaged in at this time against Iraq, would you
then say that if the United Kingdom and the United States were
to act unilaterally and go ahead and engage in a war with Iraq,
basically they would be working within the realms of the law?
(Mr Hoon) I indicated earlier that there are different
sources of international law. There is the common law of international
nations which provides basic principles like self-defence, for
example. There is also the law made by the Security Council of
the United Nations and indeed by the General Assembly, so there
is a range of ways in which action would be justified, but I assure
you that whatever decision is taken by the British Government
would be in conformity with international law.
Jim Knight
692. Can I put it to you that a pre-emptive
action and a move towards pre-emptive action to the source of
non-state-based terrorist threats is going to increasingly rely
on intelligence information which, therefore, is not going to
be disclosed to the public and that that in turn will lead either
to a need for increased trust in the people who have access to
that intelligence or an increasing tendency to go into military
action without public support.
(Mr Hoon) I do not accept part of the premise at any
rate. I do recognise the general dilemma that you have set out
for governments because that is something that we have been wrestling
with both in relation to the operation in Afghanistan and indeed
as far as the current crisis with Iraq is concerned. In relation
to both of those, the Government, after a great deal of hard thinking,
have released material that has drawn upon intelligence sources
and specifically in order to demonstrate that we are not basing
our policy simply on information that we are not prepared to disclose,
but there are always judgments about what is appropriate to release
and not least the impact that can have on the sources of such
information.
Mr Crausby
693. I think we all accept that given that you
have previously stated that it is difficult to overstate the impact
of 9/11, can you tell us why you have decided not to develop the
doctrine of the military's role in homeland defence, and in effect
left the functions of military support to the civil authorities
broadly unchanged?
(Mr Hoon) I am not sure we are good at doctrines.
I think probably what we are better at is reacting pragmatically
to the kind of threat that we have to deal with and I think that
runs through the adjustments we have made in relation to what
might be called in another country `homeland defence', but what
we would call probably `self-defence'. I think the modest change
in the organisation of our reserve forces, to the Territorial
Army, fits with certainly my experience in the time I have been
doing this job because it is not only a question of responding
to a direct military threat to the jurisdiction, but we have actually
had in recent times a number of domestic difficulties that have
required the use of members of the Armed Forces. I spent a good
deal of time. I must have upset somebody quite a lot—dealing
with foot-and-mouth, for example, and that actually called upon
the particular skills and expertise of members of the Armed Forces
in a way that I think is still not well understood by members
of the public and the logistic ability to deal with a threat across
large parts of the country was absolutely remarkable. It is that
kind of support to the civil power, whether it is a terrorist
threat or a threat to the livelihoods of large numbers of people
in the United Kingdom, I judge that having a group of people in
each region who are immediately available for that purpose is
an appropriate adjustment. I do not think it is a doctrine, but
I think it is certainly a very welcome addition to our capabilities.
694. But in the absence of a common doctrine,
how do you ensure that all the different agencies will effectively
work together?
(Mr Hoon) That actually is not my direct responsibility
because ultimately that is the responsibility in our system of
the Home Secretary and his job is to have available a range of
capabilities, whether we are talking about the police, the fire
service, medical support and so on, and our contribution is to
make available, where appropriate, members of the Armed Forces
in support of the civil power.
(Mr Webb) Of course in developing the proposal which
the Secretary of State referred to earlier on, we did have a lot
of consultation with those authorities, particularly in the case
of the civil contingency response force with the Home Office and
with the Association of Chief Police Officers and so on, so we
developed it in the knowledge of what it was they wanted and I
think that is the key point, that we went and asked them what
sort of things did they want. Interestingly, that was what they
wanted and they did not want a range of other things which people
had speculated they might want.
695. To what extent have we priorities in the
Armed Forces then to ensure that they are included in emergency
planning? I accept it is the Home Secretary's job.
(Mr Hoon) I think I recognise that in one significant
respect, and I have mentioned it already, the priority of defending
the territory of the United Kingdom since September 11th has been
given a much more significant place in our thinking than it was
before September 11th and that is the inevitable consequence of
the appalling events in the United States.
(Mr Webb) A practical example of that is that we have
set up joint regional liaison officers so that we have better
interaction with the civil authorities on a regional basis and
those posts are being filled at the moment, so that is a practical
example of how we get a better lock-in to the civil arrangements
and a faster response time.
Chairman
696. We thought at first, or at least I did,
that the Territorial Army would be first on a major scene in and
now basically the regular forces, if they are available, would
be first on to a scene. Would you like to comment on that?
(Mr Hoon) I think the decision in any given area would
be entirely a pragmatic one depending on who is available. One
of the purposes of the reorganisation will be to know we have
people available in a very short timescale to go to the assistance
of the civil power, if requested. Clearly if there are appropriate
regular forces in a given area, they would expect to be involved
and indeed would want to be involved. That was the case, for example,
in the course of flooding in large parts of Yorkshire about two
years ago where particular units based in particular localities
wanted to be engaged in helping the people that had given them
so much valuable support over very many years.
697. Could you drop us a note on how many civil
exercises the military has actually taken part in?
(Mr Hoon) I will make sure that the appropriate information
is provided to the Committee.
698. Is the military taking part in the major
exercise in London that has had such publicity?
(Mr Hoon) I will make sure that the appropriate information
is provided to the Committee.
Patrick Mercer
699. Secretary of State, thanks for the answer
to that last question. When are our regular Armed Forces going
to be formally involved in protecting the homeland? For instance,
it is interesting to note that during the firemen's strike, in
terms of the firemen who were covering this part of London, a
nameless battalion came forward to cover for them. Clearly, in
the event of a chemical or biological attack, whilst the firemen
were on duty we would have some protection at least for firemen
with chemical and biological suits. That battalion had no suits,
no orders, no plans, no provisions to give chemical or biological
cover, should this place be a target, which clearly it might.
Despite the over-stretch issue, there are tens of thousands of
NBC-trained soldiers, sailors and airmen—regulars—in
this country who do not appear to be formally involved in the
homeland defence issue, and I emphasise "formally involved".
(Mr Hoon) Please, I do not want the Committee to go
away with the idea that there are not members of the regular Armed
Forces who are involved in protecting the territory of the United
Kingdom. There is a system, for example, that has aircraft on
standby in the event of their needing to deal with a direct threat
to the territory, and that system has been obviously adjusted
in the light of what took place on September 11. They are regular
members of the Armed Forces. Having said that, the lead on the
kinds of issues that you have just raised remains with the Home
Secretary, and it is for the Home Secretary to make a judgment
about the nature of the kinds of organisations—I was going
to use the word "forces", but I do not mean that simply
limited to the Armed Forces—required to deal with threats
to the territory of the United Kingdom. The traditional division
of responsibility remains. The Ministry of Defence will be responsible
for dealing with threats from the air and threats from far off
at sea; as far as the land is concerned, that is a matter for
the Home Secretary. Clearly, as Simon indicated I think in a question
earlier on, we will try to adjust our capabilities to take account
of what the Home Secretary would judge to be required.
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